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“You did what you had to do to keep her safe. Every time. And now you are doing what you have to do to make her happy.”
“And you?” He looks at me.
“What about me?”
“Is it your turn to be made happy?”
“I doubt it,” I smirk.
“This is Tess. She has no scales,” Vrelk introduces me to the women in turn. “She is Tethys’ mother.”
“My mother died,” Tethys says, barely turning her head to correct him. “But Tess is my second mother. She is having a baby with my father.”
Getting wildly ahead of themselves seems to run strong in Sithren’s bloodline, but I do not correct her. To do so now would be to commit senseless verbal cruelty.
“That is the first time she has ever said her mother died,” Sithren murmurs.
We are all undergoing great change in a very short period of time. I am sure Tethys always knew her mother was gone, but she needed something to fill the void before she could admit it. I am that something, and I think it might be time I stopped fighting it.
“Becoming a second mother is noble,” Vrelk says. “You must be strong of spirit, though you are absent of scale.”
“Thank you, but it doesn’t take strength to care for her. She’s easy to love.”
Tethys flashes me a bright smile, then goes right back to telling her new friends how she has wings when she wants to.
“So are you,” Sithren murmurs in my ear.
“Not that easy,” I reply.
10
We are welcomed by the wild tribe. Well, most of us are. Tethys proves popular, Sithren is an agile enough warrior to be regarded as useful, which is the most important thing for any male in their world to be. I, on the other hand, am an outcast. My lack of scales causes concern among the women who are all afraid that their scales will also fall out if they get too close to me.
I am not upset at first. I know why we are here. It is for Tethys. She is safe, and Sithren is happy, and I, well, I have always been on the outside looking in. It is no real surprise to me that the dynamic continues in the wild. I am at least partially accepted as Tethys’ second mother, which keeps me from becoming completely outcast.
I feel an ache late one evening, a sort of heaviness I have not felt in some time. I know exactly what it is without even looking. I excuse myself from the communal fire and sneak off into the dark, where the moonlight reveals what I suspected. Blood is black in moonlight, and when I put my hand between my thighs, it comes away coated in liquid obsidian.
It is my period. Late. Not that surprising given the stress I have been under since Sithren abducted me, but not what I wanted. I had convinced myself in the midst of all this sacrifice that I at least got to finally have a baby of my own.
Sithren finds me crying in the bush, trying to deal with the blood.
“What is wrong?” He is so deeply worried. It is not like me to cry. He assumes something terrible has happened. In a way, it has.
“I got my bleeding. I’m not… I’m not going to have a baby.”
He lets out a sigh of relief and wraps me in his arms. “I thought something was truly terribly amiss,” he says. “Do not worry. It may take months. We have time.”
“Do we? We don’t know that. Has there ever been a Dinavri human hybrid? Is it even possible for me to conceive with you?”
“Theoretically, yes. The studies have been done. But practically… I don’t know. Nature makes her own choices. This is one of them. Do not grieve it, all is as it should be.”
Easy for him to say. He is not the one who has held this deep biological hope for longer than I can express. I just want to have a baby. I want everything the other mothers have. And yet again, life has conspired to cheat me out of what I really want.
Sithren takes me back to the little house we have been given to live in, and there he produces thick cloth pads.
“You packed these for me?” I am surprised. How did he know?
“I knew at some point you would need them. You can wash them in the river and dry them in the back of the house. Nobody needs to know.”
“If they find out, they will think I am even more of a freak than they already do,” I scowl. The Dinavri do not suffer with periods the way humans do. Their reproductive systems are more efficient, like almost every other animal in creation. Human women got fucking boned when it comes to menstruation.
“They do not think you are a freak. They aren’t used to you yet. Soon you will fit in and it will be like you have been here forever. Tethys and I have it easy. As usual, your life is harder than most.”
